A biotechnology company founded by professors at the University of California Davis has raised $11.6 million of $13 million it was seeking in a second round of funding.
The new funding follows $4.8 million Davis-based BCD Bioscience Inc. raised at the end of 2020. Both rounds were equity fundings, according to disclosure documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company didn’t respond to multiple attempts by the Business Journal to get more information.
BCD has now raised a total of $16.4 million, according to funding tracker site Crunchbase.
According to LinkedIn, the company has 13 employees who are listed on the social networking site.
BCD was launched in January 2019. CEO Steven Watkins told the Business Journal in 2020 that the company may license research from UC Davis.
The first round of funding was to be used to research new uses for carbohydrates for nutrition and immunology. On its website, the company says that BCD stands for "Better Carbohydrate Design."
BCD is working to develop proprietary techniques to transform food-grade substances into products at the cellular level which may have nutritional and immune benefits, according to its website. It's also building a library of natural sources from which to derive those products and how to do so.
BCD was still in research phase, Watkins said in 2020, and the company wasn't providing details on its final products yet.
BCD uses mass spectrometry approaches to investigate chemical compositions of carbohydrates, which are the most abundant biomolecules on earth, according to its website. BCD is building a platform that allows potential partner companies or customers to get in-depth chemical compositions of carbohydrates, which can be sourced from vegetables, yeast, fruit, fungi, algae, plants and animal sources.
The founding scientists include UC Davis chemistry professor Carlito Lebrilla; David Mills, the Shields Endowed Chair in Dairy Food Science at UC Davis; and Bruce German, the director of UC Davis’ Foods for Health Institute. German has been involved with the founding of other local companies, including Matrubials Inc. and Evolve Biosystems Inc.
BCD's principal scientist and co-founder is Matt Amicucci, who had previously been a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at UC Davis.
On its website, BCD says it’s developing the world’s first library of oligosaccharide molecules. The company says its techniques can create substances with “a wide variety of chemical structures that support diverse biological functions and patentable applications.”
